5 European Startups Investors Rejected Before They Hit Billions

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-18

Venture capital is supposed to be about spotting the future. But here's the catch: the future often looks pretty questionable when it first walks into a pitch meeting. Think about Airbnb. Founders got rejected by multiple investors before building a global hospitality giant. Google was reportedly offered to Excite and turned down. Marc Benioff has said Salesforce struggled to attract traditional VC backing early on. Europe has its own collection of these stories. Some of the continent's biggest tech successes spent years collecting rejections, skeptical looks, and variations on "this will never work." Investors weren't just unconvinced by valuation or timing—they questioned whether there was a viable business there at all. With the benefit of hindsight, those decisions make for entertaining reading. From AI video before generative AI was cool to a bank nobody thought needed building, here are five European companies that struggled to win over investors before becoming major success stories. ### BlaBlaCar – France Paris-based BlaBlaCar grew from a frustrating Christmas journey. In 2003, Frédéric Mazzella couldn't get a train home and noticed how many cars traveling the same direction had empty seats. Founded in 2006, the company turned the basic idea of matching drivers and passengers into a trusted long-distance carpooling marketplace. Investors saw problems. According to BlaBlaCar's own account, investment firms argued carpooling was too niche, difficult to monetize, and unlikely to scale. Some believed users associated the service with hitchhiking and would never pay for it. Even a proposed business-to-business version failed to generate enthusiasm. Spanish angel investor Luis Martín Cabiedes eventually helped change the picture, committing the final €150k ($165k) needed for BlaBlaCar to close a €600k ($660k) seed round in 2009. A €1.25 million ($1.4 million) round followed in 2010, and in 2015 the company raised €174 million ($200 million), establishing it as one of France's early unicorns. Today, BlaBlaCar says its community-based travel app has 40 million active members a year across 41 countries, combining carpooling with bus and train travel. Niche, not scalable, difficult to monetize? Perhaps. But 41 countries later, the niche has become rather crowded. ### Skype – Sweden Few companies embody Europe's cross-border startup identity quite as neatly as Skype. Founded in 2003 by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and Danish entrepreneur Janus Friis, with core technology developed by an Estonian engineering team, Skype used peer-to-peer technology to make internet voice calls comfortable and cheaper. European investors were considerably less comfortable. Co-founder Niklas Zennström said: "We got turned down by everyone." According to Niklas, investors were wary following the dotcom crash, while Skype's plan to disrupt the global telephone network was considerably more ambitious than the locally focused internet businesses many European funds preferred at the time. Skype did eventually find its audience rather emphatically. In 2005, eBay agreed to acquire the company in a deal initially worth around €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion). After another change of ownership, Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for €7.4 billion ($8.5 billion) in cash. The Skype service itself was eventually retired by Microsoft, but the outcome remains one of European tech's defining early exits. Apparently, "everyone" can say no and still leave room for a rather large acquisition check. ### Starling Bank – United Kingdom When Anne Boden founded London-based Starling Bank in 2014, she was hardly walking into banking as an amateur. A computer scientist by training, Boden had already held senior positions at Allied Irish Banks, RBS, and other financial institutions. Yet investors were skeptical. They questioned whether a new bank could compete with established players, especially in a post-financial crisis environment where trust in banks was low. Some wondered if a mobile-only bank was a gimmick rather than a sustainable business. Boden persisted. Starling Bank received its banking license in 2016 and launched its app in 2017. By 2021, it had reached unicorn status with a valuation of £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion). Today, Starling has over 3 million customers and continues to expand its offerings. ### Spotify – Sweden Spotify's story is another classic case of investors missing the beat. Founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify aimed to revolutionize music consumption with a legal streaming service. But investors were hesitant. The music industry was in turmoil, plagued by piracy and declining revenues. Many believed consumers wouldn't pay for music they could get for free illegally. Others doubted Spotify could secure favorable licensing deals with major labels. Ek and Lorentzon faced numerous rejections. However, they eventually secured funding from a mix of European and American investors. By 2018, Spotify went public via a direct listing, valuing the company at over $26 billion. Today, Spotify is the world's largest music streaming service, with over 400 million users. ### Adyen – Netherlands Adyen, founded in 2006 by Pieter van der Does and Arnout Schuijff, provides payment processing services for businesses. The founders saw an opportunity to simplify global payments, but investors were slow to catch on. They questioned whether a European company could compete with established payment giants like PayPal and Stripe. Some thought the market was too crowded. Adyen struggled to raise early funding, with many VCs passing. But Adyen's technology and focus on enterprise clients paid off. The company went public in 2018 and is now valued at over €60 billion ($70 billion). It processes payments for major companies like Netflix, Uber, and Spotify. These stories remind us that even the brightest ideas can be dismissed. Investors are human, after all, and the future is rarely obvious. So the next time you hear a pitch that sounds a bit crazy, remember: today's long shot could be tomorrow's unicorn.